Thailand’s very own Hollywood star Tony Jaa has reportedly flown off to Bulgaria to film the latest installment of the “Expendables” franchise.
In a recent Instagram post, Tatchakorn “Tony Jaa” Yeerum said: “Let’s go for Expendables 4. Thank you for all support.” His post after that showed his location as Bulgaria.
The action film also stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Megan Fox.
Tony Jaa, a martial artist and stunt man by profession, became a household name after starring in “Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior” (2003) and “Tom-Yum-Goong” (2005). He also played a part in many Hollywood films, including “The Fast & Furious 7” (2017) and “Monster Hunter” (2020).
Tony Jaa off to Bulgaria for Sylvester Stallone blockbuster ‘Expendables 4’
Actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer and injured a director on a film set in New Mexico on Thursday after discharging a prop firearm, officials said.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call reporting a shooting on the set of the Western “Rust,” according to a news release. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, was pronounced dead at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque after being transported via helicopter. Director Joel Souza, 48, was transported by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe, and later released. Production has halted, according to the Associated Press.
Baldwin, 63, said in a pair of tweets sent Friday morning, “There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”
The sheriff’s office stated that its investigation remains “open and active.”
“No charges have been filed in regard to this incident,” the office said. “Witnesses continue to be interviewed by detectives.”
The incident occurred at Bonanza Creek Ranch, a popular filming location near Santa Fe. Baldwin discharged the prop firearm while in character, authorities said.
“We know they were either preparing to film a particular scene or in process of filming a scene, and that’s when Mr. Baldwin discharged the firearm,” Juan Rios, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told The Washington Post. Rios said detectives are investigating how many prop firearms were on the set, how they were handled and what projectiles were discharged. The sheriff’s office expects to have more information early next week.
Firearm experts, writers and producers have wondered aloud how the incident on the “Rust” set occurred. While some producers insist on using prop guns with blanks to closely capture the sound and look of a real gun firing, others have been calling for them to be banished from film sets, saying that computer-generated imaging offers a safer alternative.
“There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore,” tweeted director Craig Zobel, whose credits include the 2020 film “The Hunt” and HBO’s “Mare of Easttown.” “Should just be fully outlawed. There’s computers now.”
A regular gun cartridge is a shell casing holding a propellant powder. When a normal gun is fired, the propellant is ignited and the bullet attached to the front of the shell casing is activated. The blanks used in prop guns generally have a material such as paper, cotton or wax attached to the front of the shell, inserted to hold in the gunpowder.
Bill Davis, a Georgia-based weapons expert who owns Tactical Edge Group and has worked on hundreds of film and television productions, told The Post that while blanks are not designed to kill, they still can if the injury is as serious as “a contact wound to the skull or a carotid artery.”
According to Davis, the safety protocols in place on nearly all sets do a great job protecting the actors and crew. He said the prop guns used on set are either in the custody of an armorer, someone who specializes in firearms on a production, or the props department.
“If you follow the rules, you’re going to have a nice, safe day,” he added.
Davis questioned whether such standard safety measures were in place for “Rust,” a film he is not working on. Weapons from the time period during which Westerns are generally set are some of the “most dangerous guns to use on set” because they do not have gas restrictors in their barrels.”
“Any gun guy who is worth their salt would have said to any actor, ‘Do not point the gun at any living thing,'” he said. “We don’t point guns at people and that’s exactly what happened here.”
Lesli Linka Glatter, president of the Directors Guild of America, said in a statement Thursday that the union was “incredibly saddened to hear of the tragic passing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and the serious injuries sustained by DGA director Joel Souza.”
Fran Drescher, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, its national executive director, issued a statement Thursday saying they would “continue to work with production, the other unions and the authorities to investigate this incident and to understand how to prevent such a thing from happening again.”
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents thousands of Hollywood crew members, including Hutchins, wrote in a public message to membership that its leaders were “heartbroken and devastated” to hear of her death.
“Our entire alliance mourns this unspeakable loss with Halyna’s family, friends, and the Rust crew,” IATSE continued, sharing resources for members to report feeling unsafe on set.
“Rust” was set to film on location in October and November, according to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office. The movie follows a 13-year-old boy and his younger brother in 1880s Kansas who are left to care for themselves following their parents’ deaths. The boys go on the run with their estranged grandfather, played by Baldwin, after the 13-year-old is sentenced to death for accidentally killing a local rancher.
Hutchins chronicled her experiences on set over the past week on Instagram, posting images of the ranch’s sweeping terrain and vibrant sunsets. She also shared a photo of the cast and crew, as well as a video of her on horseback. “One of the perks of shooting a western is you get to ride horses on your day off,” she captioned the video, followed by a smiley face.
Born in Ukraine and raised on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle, Hutchins received a degree in international journalism from Kyiv National University and worked as an investigative journalist, according to her website. She eventually started producing narrative features and, in 2015, graduated from the American Film Institute Conservatory. In 2019, Hutchins was named one of American Cinematographer magazine’s Rising Stars.
In an interview with the magazine, Hutchins noted that her time at AFI helped her discover how she wanted to work as an artist: “One thing I learned is that cinematography is not something you do by yourself. It’s a group (project),” she said. “You need to develop your own vision, but the key to a successful film is communication with your director and your team.”
Stephen Lighthill, AFI’s dean of cinematography who also serves as president of the American Society of Cinematographers, issued a statement Friday describing his former student as a “bright, talented, determined cinematographer.”
“She had a big career in front of her and a supportive family to share her success with,” he said. “Her death is a reminder that production should never be dangerous, but often is, and we must all work to fix that. The American Society of Cinematographers and all her AFI family mourn her loss, and those AFI fellows who attended with Halyna are most devastated.”
Adam Egypt Mortimer, a director who worked with Hutchins on the film “Archenemy,” described her on Twitter as “a brilliant talent who was absolutely committed to art and to film.” He wrote that he was “so sad about losing Halyna. And so infuriated that this could happen on a set.”
Actor Joe Manganiello, who starred in “Archenemy,” tweeted that he was in shock. “I can’t believe this could happen in this day and age … gunfire from a prop gun could kill a crew member? What a horrible tragedy,” he continued. “My heart goes out to her family.”
Hutchins’s friend Elle Schneider, a director and fellow cinematographer, said on Twitter that she was “sick and devastated” by the news.
“Halyna was shooting the Western RUST when she died,” Schneider wrote. “Women cinematographers have historically been kept from genre film, and it seems especially cruel that one of the rising stars who was able to break through had her life cut short on the kind of project we’ve been fighting for.”
Fisher, who stars in “Rust,” shared a photo of herself embracing Hutchins and, in the Instagram caption, recalled her “intense focus and … vibrant command of the room.” The actress noted that in the cast and crew photo, which was taken and posted online in solidarity with IATSE workers, she wanted to make sure Hutchins appeared “front and center, seeing as there are so few non-male directors of photography.”
Before the fatal shooting, Baldwin posted an Instagram photo of himself in costume with what looked like a fake wound on his stomach. “Back to in person at the office. Blimey … it’s exhausting,” wrote the actor, who is also producing “Rust.” The image was deleted early Friday.
Baldwin, an established A-lister who has appeared in films ranging from “Working Girl” to “The Departed,” achieved another round of stardom by starring in Tina Fey’s NBC sitcom “30 Rock.” He earned two Emmys for the role, and another for parodying Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live.” Much of Baldwin’s prominence in recent years also comes from periodically appearing in tabloids, as well as for repeatedly quitting and returning to social media.
Actress Patricia Arquette tweeted that she is “praying he’s getting support from family and friends because this is every actors worst nightmare.”
Other prop-gun incidents have resulted in deaths on movie sets. In 1984, 26-year-old actor Jon-Erik Hexum died days after accidentally shooting himself in the head with a prop gun on the set of a TV show. He was pretending to play Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum revolver when the gun fired a blank cartridge, authorities said at the time.
In 1993, actor Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, died after actor Michael Massee shot him in the abdomen on the set of the film “The Crow.” The prop gun was supposed to be loaded with blank and “dummy” rounds but was somehow loaded with a .44-caliber bullet, police said. A prosecutor in North Carolina, where the movie was being filmed, said the shooting was caused by the crew’s negligence, not foul play.
Lee’s sister, Shannon, tweeted on an account bearing his name that “our hearts go out to the family of Halyna Hutchins and to Joel Souza and all involved in the incident on ‘Rust.'”
“No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set,” she continued. “Period.”
By The Washington Post · Jaclyn Peiser, Sonia Rao, Timothy Bella
WASHINGTON – The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appears poised to become available to children 5 to 11 years old within weeks, after a Food and Drug Administration review found the benefits of the shot outweigh the risks in most scenarios, with the possible exception of when there are very low levels of viral transmission.
The review found that for four scenarios that were weighed, “the benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine 2-dose primary series clearly outweigh the risks.” But in one, when the virus was at its lowest levels, there could be more hospitalizations related to a rare heart side effect associated with the vaccine than because of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.
Even then, the review found, “the overall benefits of the vaccine may still outweigh the risks under this lowest incidence scenario” because of how hospitalized cases of the two conditions differ. The vaccine-related myocarditis cases have tended to resolve in a few days, unlike covid-19 infections, which can lead to death.
The review represents the first independent evaluation of company data and arrives ahead of a pivotal meeting next week at which outside experts are scheduled to debate and vote on whether the vaccine should be authorized. Extending vaccine eligibility to children younger than 12 has been a major goal of public health officials and eagerly awaited by many pediatricians and families.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech reported in a separate document posted Friday that their coronavirus vaccine is 91% effective in 5- to 11-year-olds.
The FDA analysis of the pediatric vaccines arrived on the same day another milestone was reached in the quest to immunize Americans against a virus that has killed more than 733,000 people in the United States. Booster shots of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines became available for some people Friday after federal regulators this week gave their blessing to the additional doses and declared that people who are eligible for an additional shot could get any shot as a booster regardless of which vaccine they originally received.
That leaves vaccines for younger children as the last regulatory frontier in the nation’s historic vaccination campaign.
On Tuesday, outside experts will meet and discuss the data to inform the Food and Drug Administration’s decision on one of the most momentous remaining questions for the pandemic. The authorization of a vaccine for school-aged children would open coronavirus vaccine eligibility to an estimated 28 million children in the United States and represent an important turning point in the nation’s effort to control the virus.
The vaccination campaign is anticipated to launch as early as the first week of November, after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot clears key steps.
A decision by FDA regulators is expected in the days after Tuesday’s advisory committee meeting. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who recommend how vaccines should be used, are scheduled to meet Nov. 2 and 3.
The White House has drawn up a plan for distributing vaccine to pediatrician’s offices, pharmacies, hospitals and other sites. Federal health officials project that in the first week, 15 million doses of the two-shot regimen will be shipped.
Vaccinations are planned to be available at more than 25,000 pediatrician and primary care offices, 100 children’s hospitals and health systems, tens of thousands of pharmacies, school and community clinics, community health centers and rural health clinics. Public education campaigns will help answer questions about the vaccine.
In the company briefing document, Pfizer and BioNTech argue that authorization of a coronavirus vaccine for children in this age group “could prevent harms that include, not only interruption of education, but also hospitalization, severe illness, long-term sequelae, and death. In addition, vaccinating this population will likely reduce community transmission, including transmission to older and more medically vulnerable individuals.”
Unlike older people, most children are not at high risk of severe covid-19 infections. But at least 637 have died of the disease, according to CDC data. Pfizer’s briefing document said 143 of those deaths have been within this age group and that over the first half of this year, covid was among the 10 leading causes of death for children 5 to 14. There have been 1.8 million confirmed cases of covid-19 in the age group. With the start of the school year coinciding with the dominance of the highly transmissible delta variant, about a quarter of the coronavirus infections reported in recent weeks in the United States have been in children.
“Last year, when we had lower rates of covid in children, we kept kids at home and we refused to put them into schools, and they suffered tremendously. I’m really glad schools opened, but we are seeing high, high rates: 41 kids died last month,” said Kawsar Talaat, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who is a principal investigator for the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric trial. “If there’s a way to stop that, we should use everything we have.”
Tests of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in even younger children are following close behind, and data are expected before the end of the year – first on children between 2 and 4 years old, and then on children as young as 6 months.
The vaccine regimen for 5- to 11-year-old children is two shots, each one-third the dose given to adults and teens and administered three weeks apart. There were 2,268 children originally in Pfizer’s trial, two-thirds of whom received the real shots with the rest receiving a placebo. After regulators asked the company to increase the trial size, partly to increase its safety database, the total size of the trial was doubled to about 4,500 children.
The companies reported that the vaccine triggered an immune response in participants equivalent to the one that protected teens and young adults. They also reported the vaccine was 91% effective, with 16 cases of covid in the placebo group and three in the vaccine group. None of the cases was severe.
No cases of heart inflammation, called myocarditis, were reported in the trial. That rare side effect has been associated with the vaccine, particularly in younger males, and typically resolves after a few days.
Robert Frenck Jr., director of the Gamble Vaccine Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said that at his hospital, many cases of myocarditis have been treated with a pain reliever.
Relatively mild side effects from the vaccine were most common after the second dose and included fatigue, muscle aches, headache, chills and fever.
The vaccine is a lower dose than the shot given to adults and is planned to be shipped in cartons with 10 vials, each containing 10 doses. It will be sent with supplies for children, including smaller needles. The vaccine can be stored for up to 10 weeks at refrigeration temperatures.
Pediatricians are anticipating a variety of responses from parents and families once the vaccine becomes available. There will probably be an initial surge in demand. But vaccine hesitancy – which has left the vaccination rate in the United States lagging many other countries – may be an even bigger issue for younger children.
Talaat said she hoped pediatricians, trusted health-care providers who have often known children since birth, would help persuade families, particularly those who are in the middle – not clamoring for a vaccine, but not opposed to one either.
“The vaccine just allows us that one extra level of safety to keep our kids in school and keep them healthy and to keep classes from shutting down,” Talaat said.
By The Washington Post · Carolyn Y. Johnson, Laurie McGinley
An assistant director who handed Alec Baldwin a loaded prop gun on the set of the western “Rust” told the actor the firearm was “cold,” or unloaded, officials say.
The assistant director “did not know live rounds were in” one of the three guns set aside on a cart for filming before Baldwin fired the gun, striking cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in the chest and director Joel Souza in the shoulder, killing Hutchins and hospitalizing Souza, according to court records obtained by the Associated Press, New York Times and Santa Fe Reporter on Friday. While the warrant affidavit filed by Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office investigators offers new details about the moments immediately before and after Thursday’s shooting at Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico, the document does not answer how the live round ended up in the gun.
The fatal incident on a set of a film about the fallout of an accidental killing has rattled many – leaving lingering questions about the safety of firearms on the set.
No charges have been filed and the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office says an investigation remains “open and active.”
“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours,” Baldwin wrote on Twitter. “I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”
Hutchins, 42, was airlifted to the hospital where she died. Souza was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical and was released Friday.
Magistrate Judge John Rysanek signed off Friday on investigators’ search warrant for Baldwin’s bloodied shirt, firearms and ammunition on the set, as well as cameras that could have caught the shooting and its aftermath.
The jump was the largest reported amount of hate crimes since 2001, according to the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.
Areport from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations found that anti-Asian hate crimes in the most populous county of the United States increased 76 percent in 2020 over the previous year.
The jump was the largest reported amount of hate crimes since 2001, according to the commission, which compiled these numbers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, over 40 different city police departments and police agencies at schools, universities and colleges.
Of the 44 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in the county in 2020, more than three-quarters involved physical violence, a marked increase from 58 percent in 2018, the commission said in a report released on Wednesday. In 2019, 25 anti-Asian hate crimes were reported.
The commission also noted that the number of reports was likely drastically underreported.
Local KCAL 9 news channel reported Thursday that the report was part of an annual report scheduled to be issued next month by the commission. Los Angeles County will organize a United Against Hate Week from Nov. 14 to 20.
The pre-scheduled release highlighted a disturbing trend surrounding the Asian community.
While the full scope of the report remains to be seen, many pointed to former President Donald Trump’s racially charged rhetoric against China as a trigger for some anti-Asian attacks.
The White House said Vice President Kamala Harris will visit France next month. Her trip is seen as the Biden administrations continuing efforts to repair U.S.-France relations, which suffered setbacks due to a controversial nuclear submarine deal.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Friday discussed cooperation in the Sahel and Indo-Pacific regions and agreed to meet in Rome later this month, said the White House.
Biden and Macron in a phone conversation discussed efforts to support stability and security in the Sahel, enhance cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and enable a more capable European defense, according to a White House statement.
The two leaders will meet in Rome later this month to continue their conversation on bilateral cooperation, it added.
In a separate statement, the White House said Vice President Kamala Harris will visit France next month to meet with Macron and participate in the Paris Conference on Libya on Nov. 12.
The trip of Harris is seen as the Biden administration’s continuing efforts to repair U.S.-France relations, which suffered setbacks due to a controversial nuclear submarine deal announced by the United States, Britain and Australia last month.
In mid-September, the United States and Britain said they would support the Australian Navy in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under a newly formed trilateral security pact known as AUKUS, depriving France of an existing contract to provide 12 conventional submarines to Australia.
Outraged by the abrupt move without consultations, France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia in protest.
Biden admitted the issue could have been better handled during his last call with Macron in late September.
“We are carefully studying the possible consequences,” Mashkov said.
AUKUS, a security partnership among Australia, Britain and the United States, carries the risk of undermining international and regional security, a Russian diplomat said Friday.
“We are carefully studying the possible consequences” of the creation of the AUKUS partnership, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large Grigory Mashkov said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency.
Within the AUKUS framework, the territory of a non-nuclear state could be used to deploy military infrastructure of nuclear states, Mashkov warned.
“This can create potential risks of destabilizing the situation in the field of international and regional security,” he said.
The trilateral security pact was announced on Sept. 15, under which Washington and London will support Canberra in building nuclear-powered submarines.
Russia has repeatedly voiced concerns over the new bloc.
Pfizer and BioNTech are applying FDA emergency use authorization (EUA) of a two-dose regimen of their 10-microgram dose for children ages 5 to 11. If authorized, it would be the first COVID-19 vaccine for younger children.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said their COVID-19 vaccine is safe and 90.7 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 in children ages 5 to 11.
The companies revealed the data in a document posted Friday ahead of a meeting of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scheduled for next Tuesday.
Pfizer and BioNTech are applying FDA emergency use authorization (EUA) of a two-dose regimen of their 10-microgram dose for children ages 5 to 11. The two doses would be administered three weeks apart.
The data show that the two-dose primary series of the vaccine given to children from 5 to less than 12 years of age confers a high degree of protective efficacy against COVID-19 during a period when the Delta variant of concern predominates in the United States.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet on Oct. 26 to discuss whether to authorize the vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
If authorized, it would be the first COVID-19 vaccine for younger children.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently fully approved for people ages 16 and older, and has an EUA for children ages 12 to 15.
A blanket advisory against all cruise travel remains in place.
The Canadian government has lifted its advisory against all non-essential international travel by Canadians outside the country which were in place since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
The new advisories for each country have now reverted to the four levels that existed prior to the pandemic: exercise normal security precautions, exercise a high degree of caution, avoid non-essential travel and avoid all travel.
The advisories, put back in place on Thursday, can be seen on the government’s Travel Advice and Advisory website. However, a blanket advisory against all cruise travel remains in place.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the government advised all Canadians, regardless of vaccination status, to avoid non-essential international travel.
As of Friday, Canada reported 926 new cases of the COVID-19, increasing the cumulative total to 1,694,095 cases, including 28,687 deaths, according to CTV.
As of Oct. 21, 64,293,712 vaccine doses have been distributed in the country, 57,557,726 doses have been administered and at least 27,816,165 people have been fully vaccinated. That’s about 73.2 percent of Canada’s population.
The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 12.93 million across Southeast Asia, with 32,368 new cases reported on Friday (October 22), higher than Thursday’s tally at 29,883. New deaths are at 585, increasing from Thursday’s number of 573. Total Covid-19 deaths in Asean are now at 274,675.
Malaysia’s Tourism Ministry aims to reopen the country to international tourists in November, and travelers from neighboring Singapore could be among the first to be allowed into the country.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 300,000 people crossed the Malaysia-Singapore land border each day, while the air route between Singapore and Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur was one of the busiest globally.
Meanwhile, US major drugmaker Merck and Co is considering the possibility of letting Philippine manufacturers produce the oral anti-Covid–19 drug Molnupiravir to make it readily available in the country. It is estimated that Molnupiravir will be available in the Philippines by next month, although this would still be dependent on the decision of Indian authorities in allowing exports of the antiviral medicine.
The price of the drug in the Philippines will not be as high as US$700 per course, which is the price that US government paid Merck.
Tony Jaa off to Bulgaria for Sylvester Stallone blockbuster ‘Expendables 4’
